I thought that there must be a middle ground after reading that part, too. But we, the people who know, run and support that cozy web, are actually a minority compared to the mass of internet users. It's not a good comparison, but my family and friends know absolutely nothing about all the things that make up the cozy web. Dozens of people and literally nobody knows what RSS, Mastodon or blogs are. When asked about privacy, nobody cares. Nobody except my brother uses ad blockers. Just a few examples.
From my experience and what I know about web users in general, this seem to scale to the whole internet. Like 90% of the people know nothing about "our cozy web" and don't care about anything else than the commercial web.
I have a lot of thoughts about this, most glaringly because we tend to use our perspective of social media to paint our idea of others, when in reality social media in general still only captivates around 55% of the general population. It's important to keep this scale in mind, to prevent us from giving up hope and claiming nobody cares.
We often keep the cozy web secretive due to eternal september and also underfunded. You can see how these loop into each other very easily. Can't fund a better solution when we keep trying to keep it a secret.
We're also very bad at framing things. So often I'll observe what should have been a slam dunk: convey why privacy matters and easy alternatives they can use/ways to keep themselves safer, yet they wind up just convincing the person why they should stick within the misleading warm glow of the commercial web trap. Happens so often! A complete lack of empathy, just scoffing and dismissal.
I say all of this to say, we can do better. We have ample opportunity, we need to stop squandering it and indirectly killing the cozy web along with it.
To be fair, the claim that 90% of the people don't care about that is a bit exaggerated, but I think it points into the right direction.
I'm absolutely with you. I would love that the web becomes what it once was. A place where people care about people, instead of just money. And our best bet would be to show our lovely relatives and friends that there are websites out there where they don't have to click through huge cookie banners, being constantly forced to download apps or whatever, or having 50%+ of the screen occupied by ads. And not to forget that their privacy is being respected. Yes, we can do better.
So, it's roughly like Linux in 1997 or something. It's out there, you can use it, lots of people love it, it's a whole community...and 99% have never heard of it.
That's fine. It can survive and even thrive with 1-2%. And, if it turns out to be superior in some important ways, and stable & persistent (vs the ups and downs of Windows and various former Unixes), it's got nowhere to go but up.
I remember there being similar contempt for Linux in those days: nobody cares, normies will never get it, it's a rounding error. It was viewed as just a weird little cult and a punchline.
Now grandma has an Android and aunt Betsie loves her Chromebook, and pretty much everybody interacts with Linux systems every day--and that has resulted in more variety, better driver & software support, and more features for us geeks.
This may be the beginning of something similar. If it is, it'll begin as a niche community of like-minded geeks, like that described in the article.
Of course, this could also be a short-lived fad that dies out in a couple years as people get bored and return to the normie web. If so...it's fun in the meantime.
How are they using any modern website without despairing? The web, particularly news sites, is unusable without ad blockers. It's insane, some pages insert ads every two paragraphs of content.
- Most horrible one is that they are either used to it and just accept the way it is without questioning it.
- News can be consumed in other ways, TV is popular especially for older generations. My wife for example listens to the podcast of one of the biggest newspapers: 10-12 minutes of the most important news with only a short break for commercials.
- Not sure about that one, but there's also the option to pay. From what I know the prices for access to a digital version of a newspaper without ads is kinda fair.
I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at. Like, yeah, the “cozy web” is fairly marginal, but the “tech-savvy” web the article discusses is even more so.
What really bugs me about all the Google/Facebook/Twitter anti-ad-blocker stuff is that if only a tiny minority of us use them why are they putting so much effort into to stopping us?
From Facebook breaking copy/paste so you can’t email calendar events to people not on the platform to Twitter closing APIs to third party clients to Google attempting to stop ad blockers.
It’s all just to make life worse for a tiny group of people.
A cursory google (I haven't verified it)
"42.7% of internet users worldwide (16-64 years old) use ad blocking tools at least once a month. 27% of American internet users block ads. AdBlock, a popular blocking extension, is reported to have more than 65 million users."
The "cosy web" is supposed to be your family and friends instant messengers (chat rooms). Shared spreadsheets, that sort of "private" spaces on the web.
That forum or chatroom you are participating in for your niche hobby. Etc. It's differently shaped for everybody, and the name isn't ubiquitous. I think you may be confusing it with the fediverse?
From my experience and what I know about web users in general, this seem to scale to the whole internet. Like 90% of the people know nothing about "our cozy web" and don't care about anything else than the commercial web.